Chapter 923: Scaling the Mountains

After Tang Wulin scaled the first mountain, he began to understand why this rule had been set in place.

Climbing these snowy mountains was definitely a test of one's willpower. Without being able to use one's martial soul, the journey was quite tough, even with abundant reserves of soul power.

The snow on the mountains was very thick, which made walking quite difficult, and the terrain was very steep. The temperatures only plummeted further the higher one climbed, and the air also grew thinner at high altitudes.

Even with his physical constitution, his breathing had begun to accelerate after scaling the first snowy mountain. For a normal person, there was no way to complete this task without any modern equipment to assist them. However, he really liked this feeling, and he enjoyed the grind.

After resting for a while and eating a few handfuls of snow, Tang Wulin leaped forward and jumped straight down the other side of the mountain from the summit.

The thick snow provided him with the ideal padding, and his body quickly slid down along the mountain face, hurtling toward the foot of the mountain.

Only Tang Wulin would dare to do something like this as other people would definitely be concerned about what would happen to them at the conclusion of their descent.

Tang Wulin completely spread open his body to maximize the surface area of the snow that he came into contact with, thereby preventing himself from sinking into the thick snow. His body was constantly accelerating, and powder snow was flying past him on either side. He released his spiritual power so he could detect any hazards down below, and constantly adjusted the direction that he was going in in accordance with those observations.

It had taken him over an hour to scale the mountain, but only several minutes to get down to the other side. As he began to near the foot of the mountain, Tang Wulin raised both of his legs and borrowed the momentum to continue sliding forward, taking him several dozens of meters up the next mountain before his momentum finally ran out. He then bent his legs and sat up, and his entire body sank into the accumulated snow on the mountain face.

That was so exhilarating! 

This was most likely what skiing or snowboarding felt like.

The snow on these mountains was very thick, and Tang Wulin had learned that under such settings, one had to make as little sound as possible. Otherwise, it would be very easy to trigger an avalanche. As such, he repressed the urge to let loose a cry of elation before flattening himself against the mountain face. Almost half of his body had sunk into the accumulated snow, and he was climbing upward with difficulty.

He didn't use his martial soul, but his hands were as hard as steel essence, and even without using his golden dragon claws, he could still scale the mountain face in a steady manner.

Not all sections of the mountain face were as steep as this; the steepness of the terrain fluctuated, and on the flatter sections, he could stand up and walk like normal. He followed the instructions of the GPS, climbing over one mountain after another, and he was steadily closing in on his destination.

At this point, his entire body had completely sunk into this snowy mountain. 

Each successive mountain was taller than the previous one, and the terrain also became steeper and steeper. Tang Wulin sat on the pinnacle of a mountain, and he was finally struck by a hint of exhaustion.

An entire day had already passed, and he'd lost count of how many mountains he'd scaled, but he could no longer see the path that he'd come from.

The sky gradually began to darken, but his destination was nowhere in sight. With his energy reserves, he could still keep going, but these snowy mountains were extremely cold at night. He could feel that the surrounding temperatures were most likely lower than -50°C, [-58°F for mah American homies] and his body heat was being expended very quickly.

Regardless of how confident he was, it was best to cut himself some slack. Otherwise, he'd be in trouble in the case of unforeseen circumstances.

As for how he was going to rest, that wasn't an issue that was going to stump him.

He dug a snow cave into the mountain face, then curled up into a ball within it. He then pulled out some blankets from his storage ring to keep the snow and ice at bay. It wasn't exactly a comfortable shelter, but it was certainly better than being out in the cold.

In a way, this was quite an amazing experience. Tang Wulin pushed the blankets to compact the surrounding snow in order to make it more solid, then withdrew his own aura. In doing so, his body temperature gradually decreased, and both his blood essence and soul power vortexes began to rotate at a slower rate.

As his soul power rank approached 60, a semblance of a crystal was already beginning to form in his soul power vortex, indicating that he was on the brink of successfully manifesting a soul core. As soon as he attained a soul core, his soul energy would form a self-sustaining circuit in his own body. Even without any injection of natural energies, he would be self-subsistent.

Following a night of meditation, Tang Wulin woke up, feeling completely reinvigorated. As opposed to going outside right away, he ate some food in his snow cave first. Dried rations didn't taste very good, and their texture was also quite hard, but he had to replenish his energy somehow.

He spread open his hands and emerged from the snow cave. The bone-chilling wind buffeted his body, making him shudder while also completely waking him up.

He did some stretching, and the blood essence vortex within his body began to accelerate in its rotation. A burst of scorching blood essence fluctuations began to exude from his body, and a visible layer of white mist had formed around him. His aura was like scorching fire, causing water vapors to permeate through the air.

He took a few deep breaths to inhale the sparse air in the environment. After taking a look at his GPS, he abruptly jumped up and continued in his journey.

The mountain up ahead was extremely precarious, and the mountain faces were close to being completely vertical, but this was a route that he had to take. From the images being displayed on his GPS, it appeared that he would arrive at his destination after scaling this mountain and descending to the other side.

However, this mountain was simply far too difficult to scale. Due to its sheer steepness, there wasn't much accumulated snow on the mountain faces, but there were many slippery patches of ice, and it would be extremely difficult to scale it with just one's body alone.

Ever since he was a small child, Tang Wulin had developed a personality that would only make him stronger in the face of adversity, and in the face of this latest obstacle, he came up with a plan after just a brief moment of contemplation.

He couldn't use his martial soul, and even using the power of the Golden Dragon King would most likely be breaking the rules, so he'd just have to use his own tremendously powerful body.

After stabilizing himself, he flattened his right hand like a blade before abruptly stabbing into the wall of ice up ahead.

His right hand pierced into the ice with a dull thump, and even though the ice on this mountain was extremely hard, it was nothing in the face of Tang Wulin's terrifying strength.

He hung down securely from the wall of ice before also stabbing his other hand in the ice in the same manner. He tested how solid the ice was first before the muscles on his arms abruptly bulged as he pulled downward with all his might, sending his own body propelling straight up into the air.

He was using nothing but the power of his arms to do this! After ascending for roughly 10 meters, he ran out of momentum and plunged his hands into the ice again.

If he weren't concerned about breaking the wall of ice by exerting too much power, he would've been able to launch himself far more than 10 meters into the air. As a safety precaution, he had no choice but to hold back.

Thus, he sprang up over and over again before landing on the wall of ice. His hands were like the most reliable of ice picks, firmly pinning himself to the wall of ice each time before launching him upward again. He was traveling extremely quickly up the mountain face like a giant frog; this section of the mountain was over a kilometer tall, but he reached the summit in only around 15 minutes.

He shook out his slightly sore arms and flexed his fingers, which were slightly red from the cold, and they naturally recovered after he circulated his blood essence within his body for a cycle. This was the merit of having an immensely powerful body. In particular, Tang Wulin's blood essence had become noticeably more powerful after consuming those Singular Velvet Sky Chrysanthemum petals. He could even feel that if things were to continue like this, he'd be able to break this 10th Golden Dragon King seal soon.

He was both looking forward to this, yet also rather concerned.

Old Tang had been hibernating for a very long time, but he'd told him in the past that the second batch of nine Golden Dragon King seals would be far more difficult to deal with than the first nine. Compared to the second nine seals, the first nine were like a process to acclimatize his body to the power of the Golden Dragon King. The energy within the final nine seals would all be extremely terrifying, and if he couldn't absorb it, then he'd be destroyed. As such, he definitely couldn't do anything rash without making ample preparations.

However, risk and reward came hand in hand; it was undoubtedly the case that breaking the 10th seals would result in an extremely powerful ability being bestowed upon him by the Golden Dragon King bloodline, one that would be far superior to his previous four abilities.

As he continued up the snowy mountain, the terrain gradually began to flatten out. He continued to forge ahead in a rather unsteady manner, and after climbing over a small hill, he was surprised to discover that the terrain on the other side of the hill no longer led downward. Instead, there was a grassland-like existence situated on the summit of the mountain. To put it more accurately, this was a snowland.

There were dense bunches of barracks up ahead, and this appeared to be quite a massive military base. There were lookout posts surrounding the area, but no guard towers. It was impossible to see what materials these structures were constructed from due to the thick accumulated snow, but these barracks truly existed, and they covered an area of at least a square kilometer!